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G.O.P. Attacks Reid Over Comments

WASHINGTON — Republicans on Sunday sought to portray racially insensitive remarks attributed to Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, in a new book as similar to comments made in 2002 by Trent Lott, the Republican leader who was forced to step down.

Democrats rejected that comparison and continued to close ranks behind Mr. Reid for comments he made suggesting that Barack Obama could become the first African-American president because he was “light-skinned” and because he did not speak with a “Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.” They said the circumstances surrounding Mr. Reid and Mr. Lott were not parallel.

Republicans, however, pressed the issue, with some even calling for Mr. Reid to step down.

“There’s a big double standard,” the Republican national chairman, Michael Steele, said in an interview on “Meet the Press” on NBC. Mr. Steele, along with Senators Jon Kyl of Arizona and John Cornyn of Texas, suggested that Mr. Reid should resign.

“What’s interesting here is when Democrats get caught saying racist things, an apology is enough,” Mr. Steele said. “If that had been Mitch McConnell saying that about an African-American candidate for president of the United States,” Democrats would be “screaming for his head, very much as they were with Trent Lott.” Mr. McConnell is the Senate minority leader.

In 2002, Mr. Lott’s supportive comments about his Senate colleague Strom Thurmond’s long-ago segregationist candidacy for president led to Mr. Lott’s resignation as Republican majority leader, though he later returned to the leadership.

“I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him,” Mr. Lott had said. “We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years, either.”

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Republicans are comparing comments by Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, to comments made in 2002 by Trent Lott, the Republican leader, that eventually led to Mr. Lott's resignation. Democrats closed ranks behind Mr. Reid.Credit
Luke Sharrett/The New York Times

He left the Senate in 2007 and settled into a relatively quiet life as a lobbyist in Washington.

Mr. Lott could not be reached for comment on Sunday. But his name was being invoked everywhere in the wake of Mr. Reid’s problems.

Representative James E. Clyburn, Democrat of South Carolina, disputed the comparison. “This is in no way analogous to the Trent Lott situation,” Mr. Clyburn said in an interview Sunday.

Mr. Clyburn, the highest-ranking African-American in Congress, came to Mr. Reid’s defense on Saturday, soon after the Nevada senator issued a statement apologizing for the remarks he made to John Heilemann and Mark Halperin, the authors of the new book “Game Change.” He also expressed his regret in a telephone call to Mr. Obama.

The president accepted the apology and released a glowing statement about Mr. Reid, hailing his record on civil rights and saying that “as far as I’m concerned, the book is closed.”

Politically speaking, there is a fundamental difference between Mr. Reid’s travails and those of Mr. Lott. While Mr. Reid was instantly forgiven and strongly supported by Mr. Obama, Mr. Lott was not by the Bush administration (Mr. Lott essentially accused the Bush White House of abandoning him.)

“Having Obama grant immediate absolution makes all the difference,” said Ed Rogers, a Republican lobbyist and close friend of Mr. Lott.

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Barack Obama and Senator Harry Reid at a campaign rally in Henderson, Nev., in November 2008.Credit
Damon Winter/The New York Times

It also helps that in this case, the president himself happens to be the potentially aggrieved party. And there were similarities to what happened in 2007, when Joseph R. Biden Jr., then running for president, apologized to Mr. Obama after trying to compliment him by saying he was “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.”

Mr. Obama accepted that apology, too, and a year later threw in a nice job with the administration.

Supporters of Mr. Reid said the Reid and Lott situations were also different because of what they say is Mr. Reid’s unimpeachable record on civil rights. They mentioned Mr. Reid’s support from black leaders across the country as well as his efforts to integrate the Las Vegas strip and Nevada’s gambling industry. Mr. Lott’s record was more mixed, and included, among things, his previous opposition to making the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday a federal holiday and his vote against the Voting Right Act as a member of Congress.

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“They are not in the least bit comparable,” said Lani Guinier, the Harvard Law School professor whose nomination as assistant attorney general for civil rights in 1993 was pummeled by conservative groups and eventually withdrawn by President Bill Clinton.

Mr. Lott’s remarks, Ms. Guinier said, seemed to be expressing nostalgia for the segregationist platform of Mr. Thurmond’s 1948 presidential campaign, while Mr. Reid comments seemed to be addressing “an unfortunate truth about the present.” That truth, she said, is that Mr. Obama would have had a more difficult time getting elected if his skin were darker and if he spoke in a dialect more identifiable as “black.”

Republicans said that if their current Senate leader, Mr. McConnell, had said what Mr. Reid did, the Democrats and many in the news media would be lining up to demand his resignation.

“Mitch McConnell would be convicted and sent to Guantánamo if he said what Reid said,” Mr. Rogers said.

Mr. McConnell could not be reached for comment. Mr. Reid’s spokesman, Jim Manley, said that Mr. Reid had no intention of stepping down as leader and would continue his campaign for re-election this year in Nevada — a race many experts said would be a significant struggle for him, especially now.

A version of this article appears in print on January 11, 2010, on Page A11 of the New York edition with the headline: G.O.P. Attacks Reid Over Comments. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe